On significative exergy: Toward a logomachics of education

Abstract

The conceptual gambit of this article is to propose that the notion of anti-entropy should be complemented by that of exergy investment or destruction, a term first proposed by Zoran Rant in 1956. It argues that one of Bernard Stiegler’s most important interventions into deconstruction is the thermodynamic reformulation of Derridean différance. I argue that we should view the idea of anti-entropy as likewise the displacement of entropy to an external system. With the notion of exergy, it becomes possible to outline an economics of exergy expenditure and investment that considers this displacement. Having argued for the necessity of exergy as a concept that may complement anti-entropy, I demonstrate that this economy of exergy expenditure, through transductive analogy, can be applied to signification. An economics of exergy may give crucial insight into the transcendental problem of signification; that which Derrida’s notion of différance first responded to. I ask the question: can a trace-like logic of sense be understood energetically if trace itself is understood to be materially inscribed into the world? Having explored this question, I then outline how education might be understood as both the means through with traditional significations are energetically maintained as well as the means through which metastable significations can be disrupted. I use the recent banning of anti-capitalist literature in the UK as an example of what I call logomachics, a conflict of significative exergetic investment and disinvestment.

KEYWORDS:

• Logomachy
• Derrida
• Stiegler
• différance
• anthropocene
• entropy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Exergy was also recently used by Maël Montévil in a discussion of Stiegler’s idea of the ‘Entropocene’ (2020, p.6)

2 I shall not explore the problem of what ‘information’ means for Derrida in this article. It suffices to say that this term has many meanings. One of which, as Derrida seems to use, signifies ‘mutual formation’.

3 It also allows us to maintain the important conclusions that Vitale puts forward under the notion of bio-deconstruction, that life is always at the same time life/death.

4 For the purpose of clarity, deconstruction can be understood as a play between destruction on one hand and construction on the other (Derrida, 1985).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joel White

Joel White completed his PhD, ‘Of Logomachia: Artaud, Energy and the Dissipation of Form’, at King's College London as well as a double European Masters in Contemporary European Philosophy at Kingston University (CREMP) and Paris VIII (Saint-Denis). He has published on the work of Artaud and Kant in Performance Philosophy, Shakespeare and Walter Benjamin in Angelaki, and Plato, Nietzsche and Simondon in Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy. He is currently translating into English Artaud’s Revolutionary Messages for Bloomsbury Academic.